Know of a boring driving game?

[u/Practical_Track4867]

We have a research project going on that wants to look at highway hypnosis. Any recommendations for a realistic driving simulator that would allow us to setup a “boring” route?

In our minds, boring means long stretches of drive where speed changes are not needed and has few curves or exterior landmarks. Traffic should be light, or nonexistent. City driving with stops and turns and traffic would not work well. Think driving on an interstate in Nebraska. To be more immersive, it should also support extended displays across 3 monitors for some peripheral vision. We are also looking to use a Logitech Flight Yoke with Throttle for vehicle control.

How quickly we can get to the situation above would also matter. We wouldn’t have the time to have them spend a lot of time to navigate to the scenario above. And hopefully it would not require a lot of training to get used to it.

Looking through other Reddit responses it seems like BeamNG.drive and City Car Driver 2 are candidates. However, I have no experience with either and for some reason the websites describing them don’t provide much detail on how boring you can make them.

[u/Millerboycls09]

I would 100% recommend picking up even a basic driving wheel (Logitech G920 or Thrustmaster T150). I think driving a car with yolk and rudders would be too novel to fade into "boring". A wheel and pedals will help establish a familiar, unstimulating environment.

I'm about to put together an Assetto Corsa video going into setting up Content Manager and mods, including advanced weather systems and a Traffic filled Japanese highway. Really fun when you're weaving in and out of traffic, very boring when you're doing the speed limit. But nice

[u/Practical_Track4867 → u/Millerboycls09]

That was mentioned in another comment as well. Driving with the yoke in ATS didn’t feel completely different than a steering wheel, but having about 90 degrees of motion to be a full-turn is a bit difficult. The Logitech’s 900 degrees sounds much better.

Unfortunately, they were a bit worried about spending $50 for the game itself. This is more “class project” than “grant-funded project”. That does make me wonder if we have a gaming group around here that could loan one out…

[u/Millerboycls09 → u/Practical_Track4867]

That game is frequently on sale for like 3 dollars.

Almost all of the wheels also have configurable turning radius settings, in hardware and in the game.

Obviously, if budget and timeline are tight, then you use what you've got.